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When a medical emergency crops up, most people’s first thoughts aren’t about convenience or cost; they’re thinking about how to get help as quickly and efficiently as possible. In many cases this means visiting an emergency room, especially if lives are in danger. However, long wait times and increasing healthcare costs have some people turning to urgent care centers for injuries that—up until recently—would have landed them in the ER.

Providence Health & Services Alaska set foot in Alaska in 1902 during the Gold Rush in Nome when the Sisters of Providence first brought healthcare to the Last Frontier. Since then Providence has grown, providing healthcare in six Alaska communities: Anchorage, Eagle River, Kodiak Island, Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Seward, and Valdez. In Alaska, Providence has 4,000 employees, led by Bruce Lamoureux, Senior VP/CEO of the Providence Alaska Region.

Mental illnesses have a major impact on individuals and society as a whole. The annual direct and indirect economic cost of mental illness in the United States is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Mental illness lowers individuals’ productivity and income; raises healthcare costs for other illnesses; and increases addiction, homelessness, and disability rates.

Alaskans are having an increasingly expansive discussion about childhood trauma and the far-ranging impacts these events have on the economic, health, and social outcomes of individuals as well as the larger issues facing the state. Greater understanding of the biology of trauma is helping expand the understanding of the psychological impact of trauma.

The time for employer shared responsibility penalties, or “assessable payments” as the IRS refers to them, is finally here. Note that most of us would refer to penalties as “taxes,” but we don’t because the US Supreme Court taught us in NIFB v. Sibelius that there is a difference between taxes and penalties.

There is no such thing as a “good” cancer, an “easy” cancer, or a “safe” cancer. But reproductive cancers can be especially devastating, perhaps because they strike at such an integral part of one’s personal identity.

If you provide incentives to encourage employees to participate in wellness programs, such as discounting the cost of the medical insurance coverage for being tobacco-free, changes may soon be necessary as a result of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) proposed rules that were issued on April 20, 2015.

It wouldn’t be uncommon for a family or adventurer to drive north from Anchorage to Fairbanks along the Glenn and Richardson Highways. Considering the Alaska scenery, wildlife, and well-maintained highway system, it could be the trip of a lifetime.